Thursday, September 12, 2019

With the return of Premier Brian Pallister to the helm of the province, the progressive left in its various forms fell far short of their hopes on election night in Manitoba, and a realignment is inevitable.

Since 2011, the Progressive Conservatives have only increased its share of the popular vote by 3.36% to 47.07%, but has distributed votes to almost double the seats held, from 19 to 36. The NDP, which ruled the roost that year with 46.16% and 37 seats, have fallen to 31.38 percent of voter support, their seats cut by more than half to 18. Trying to halve that 15 point gap is the next step up the ladder.

Former Premier Gary Filmon tells about the one that got away

As long as Wab Kinew can only attract 23% or so of voters outside Winnipeg, the NDP will never regain the seat of power. And by 2024, the term "FILMON" will be long put to rest, once and for all, as a dogwhistle to attack conservatives. While the Winnipeg Free Press framed the Kinew speech as "Despite election defeat, NDP does victory lap", the victory was over the other left wing opposition parties. The Tories were barely dented by Kinew, with none of the Winnipeg seats grabbed from the PC's qualifying as a total surprise. It was no secret backbencher Blair Yakimoski was in a tough fight in Transcona to retain, and in swing seat St. Vital, Jamie Moses was a persisent presence in the riding and decisively avenged his 2016 loss to Colleen Mayer. In my view, redistribution made St. James a tough but expected lost seat for the PC's. If anything, the NDP failure to win the newly created McPhillips constituency in the north end of the city, where the Seven Oaks Hospital is located, was more surprising, as PC MLA Shannon Martin parachuted in and eeked out a return to the Legislature.The prospects for the other two opposition parties dimmed greatly despite earlier polling which demonstrated the very definition of "parking their vote". After dislodging the volatile Rana Bokhari as Liberal leader, Dougald Lamont didn't move the dial beyond a .08% increase in electoral support in a disappointing result. He, Dr. Jon Gerrard in River Heights, and Cindy Lamoureaux (relocated to Tyndal Park), return to Broadway but the Libs fell short of official Party status.

Lamont waffled to the left with scads of climate change pronouncements trying to stem leakage to the Green Party, and made spending promises that even made socialists blush. In the process attracted only 5005 more votes and failed to hold a 4th seat and retain party status. The scant economic policy didn't chip into Tory support, and the ground game simply didn't materialize. I suspect the Trudeau government's scandals made even considering a checkmark beside a candidate labeled Liberal a no-go for more than a few voters. As for the Manitoba Green Party, support for leader James Beddome in Fort Rouge was tripled by Kinew, and the Party failed to close a 392 vote gap in Wolseley and saw it grow to 917, and out of reach, for David Nickarz. The Green wave is D-O-A here, and in his speech Kinew already promoted that progressive left is spelled N-D-P in this province. It's too bad because voters need more candidates with more new ideas, not less.

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Premier Pallister was working the room sharing the thrill of victory around 11 PM and when he noticed me, laughingly remarking how after all these years (we first met in 1993) "we're getting better with age!" "Mazel Tov! Hey, I want to get a 30 minute interview with you sometime." Immediately I got the infamous Pallister steely glare. "No."I figured he was joking so I said, "OK, 20 minutes then!"

"No. You, and Bartley Kives," he said.

Instantly he burst out laughing at the look on my face, reached down, grabbed and shook my hand some more and said "AWWWWI'm just joshing with you, of course we can!"

He conceded after the win that the biggest take-away is that his government needs to do a better job of listening, and I will hold them to that. There are a number of issues that I covered during the election that may not matter to MSM, but do to my audience.I would ask Premier Pallister about construction contract corruption strangling Manitoba-based trades, and why accountability for the engineering profession has deteriorated under the revised Act to the point they act like a protection racket. And more:* Will he curtail the WRHA continuing to pump out 2 million "harm reduction" needles for meth addicts with no responsibility to deal with the impact of discarded used rigs in the community? What about the meth detox unit proposal of Morberg House that has so much support from politicians of all stripes, including two members of his own caucus?* Will loopholes in the candidate disclosure law (ie Garnishment Orders, and by the way the list is up to 4 NDP'ers now) be closed? * And not that it was an election issue, but the antique City of Winnipeg Act is a problem every week at City Hall - if there's changes to come, your voice needs to be heard.Those are on the kitchen table, so to speak, of my audience.***********I'm pitching for your help again: my donor campaign had some good spurts of support but waned towards the end of the campaign.

If you readers think I have contributed to overall coverage of the 2019 Manitoba election and want me to do more of the same with the Federal Election kicking off, your help to keep the lights and internet on, cover gas and transportation costs. Some wiggle room for adding and upgrading equipment are going to be needed.My goal is to raise another $1000 - and every donation of $100 or more gets a copy of RETROPEG, a veritable time capsule of black and white photos of the streets and scenes of Winnipeg in the 70's. It's a rare, beautiful book and I have yours.

The stories I was able to produce since the end of June is thanks to the people who donated because they believe in citizen journalism. I do my best every day to maintain their trust and confidence.Please take a moment to check out this story and see how easy it is to join the donor club to stand with independent reporting.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

With no public interest broadcaster at work in Manitoba on the provincial election, important and serious aspects underpinning health, economic and safety policy were left to languish on the sidelines of mainstream media story selections.

I tried my best to carry the ball and make sure voices raising inconvenient truths in the election were heard.Readers donated towards this work and I've been honoured to earn their trust and support. You can join the donors list too.*********This column is about four election issues - discarded used needles, meth-induced property and violent crime, safe injection sites, and drug detox and recovery spending priorities - and how the mainstream media completely let the public down by ignoring or under-reporting those stories and not holding politicians to account.

1) Since last October my main beat has been to uncover critical errors and deficiencies in public health practices that are resulting in over a hundred thousand contaminated used needles dumped unsafely onto streets, boulevards, lanes, parks, and private residences all over Winnipeg already this year. (I focused on Winnipeg but it's a huge problem in Brandon, rural areas and first nations communities as well.)

As the election loomed I reported that the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority had underestimated the number of discarded sharps in Winnipeg by 400%. AT LEAST. And I reported that the year over year increase from their October 2018 estimate to June of 2012 was 1200%. That news got the attention of PC MLA Sarah Guillemard and the Bear Clan on Twitter. who liked and retweeted my comments. I got further comments from Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont and a city councilor chimed in too:

"Mynarski Councilor Ross Eadie, whose north end ward has been noticably afflicted with discarded used needles, reacted to our story exposing that health officials lowballed the estimate of discarded needles in Winnipeg by 400% last year.

With discards estimated to be up 1200% since last year, Eadie cautioned:

"I definitely believe Street Connections has not handled their program very well over the years on the collection side."

... Dougald Lamont, the Manitoba Liberal leader was critical of both needle and data collection by the WRHA, saying it was "not surprising that the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority's estimate of discarded needles was so far from actual numbers," and insisted that "Manitobans deserve to know the extent of issues within their communities."

Lamont was bang on. The WRHA's "harm reduction" policy and free needle exchange program is based on a 1996 study from goddamn Baltimore - where NO ONE was cranking methamphetamine.

Last October the WRHA claimed:

"Needle distribution programs have also been shown to reduce the number of discarded needles in the community overall.", citing a study published in the year 2000.

In the same email, officials argued:

"Needle return rates have very little to do with the number of needles found discarded unsafely in the community."

Can someone explain why needle returns were counted and rates were tracked and bragged about by those same exchange programs in Regina, Saskatoon and other places in the past?

But if it wasn't for me asking politicans questions what they were going to do about used needles endangering the public and the WRHA's failure to monitor, let alone control, the meth epidemic, no one in the media would have asked.

"Good data is very important for governments to make the right policy choices", Lamont said.

To be clear - the WRHA uses a 23 year old study to justify a program depositing, by their own admission, up to 41,000 needles of THEIR needles on the street, that doesn't collect proper needle return or discard data, and that doesn't even require ANY needles be brought in or a single question asked before "harm reduction" workers hand out clean needles by the boxload.

Green Party leader James Beddome and the NDP candidate in St. Boniface Laurissa Sims, concurred with Lamont at a St. B town hall that the WRHA had failed to ensure "harm reduction" for addicts didn't result in harm for law-abiding citizens and for children. That's all 3 opposition parties, criticizing the role of WRHA harm reduction policies leaving used needles on our streets, under the Pallister regime.

You'd think CBC or someone would have picked up on that as an election issue.

But the valid crime concerns of the residents and businesses seeking enforcement - not to mention families terrorized by meth-crazed relatives and neighbours - got no traction in the elction campaign. Why?

For one, because there is no effective voice for crime victims in this city, and none of the opposition parties wanted to be caste in that role. In fact, the NDP platform didn't address crime enforcement at all.

However, there is an effective and coordinated lobby in support of the WRHA. Those activists have never questioned the harm reduction policy - let alone admit its failures - and makes money off any program expansion.

So crime issues became secondary to jockeying for public support over spending promises made about treatment options and health care services, ignoring immediate protection of our community.

And no one in the media championed their cause.

As for Brian Pallister and the PC's, they talked a good game about hiking policing and enforcement budgets, but no one asked them if they will attach measurable results to the funding, or how they define success.

* The next time an MSM reporter mentions the 92.9% increase in property crime in St. Boniface to an MLA or a Premier and asks what they will do, it will be the first time.

* If they ask for a comment about the analysis of former cop James Jewell, who dissected a flawed investigation structure under police chief Danny Smyth that amplified the factors behind the 92.9% hike in property crime, it will be the first time.

* The next time reporters ask those wanting your vote how they will reform the Intoxicated Persons Act to allow for detention of addicts in a meth psychosis, a prerequisite to expanding ANY drug stabilization or detox unit services, it will also be the first time.

***********

3) Another election train all the opposition parties hopped onto, without question from the media, was the establishment of "safe injection" sites.

The contrast with the Progressive Conservatives was easy for the media to grasp and portray - conservatives are against letting addicts shoot up in taxpayer-paid spaces (bad policy), and everyone else was agreeing with the "WRHA harm reduction fan club" to open places for users (good policy).

Well... not quite everybody. With good reasons to boot. But the media wouldn't hear of it, let alone report on it.

But the trio at the St. B town hall heard it, from Marion Willis and the addicts in the residential recovery program at Morberg House.

She dared them to produce a single study showing a safe injection site was appropriate for meth users. They still haven't.

Here's the video:

Refuting the NDP 100 day plan to centralize services with the Main Street Project, Marion Willis told the panel, "I'm a better expert what it actually takes to take meth addict from addicted to Morberg House, these outcomes are achieved because it isn't happening on Main Street..."

She went on to dispute their lockstep support for safe injection sites as a viable option to handle the meth crisis:

"I would challenge you to go and find some current research on methamphetamine use disorder, guess what? IT DOESN'T EXIST... Everybody has adopted the protocols for addressing the opiod crisis ... this is a methamphetamine crisis, and it's a very different beast..."

There isn't enough understanding and I see that clearly ... it's painfully obvious to us that even those within the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority making decisions actually don't know enough about it and they're making a lot of assumptions."

Now god forbid, any media outlets had asked politicians favouring safe injection sites how they would propose handling the increased

crime those facilities had brought to neighborhoods in Calgary, Edmonton, and Wab Kinew's favorite example, Lethbridge, where a man was stabbed in the face last weekend and where the rooms are booked solid as meth addicts smoke themselves into oblivion in a modern day, taxpayer-funded equivalent of an opium den. But can you imagine if just one had reported what Marion Willis, whose program has a 67% success rate, with no funding from the provincial government, told the panel?

"'Harm reduction' isn't necessarily a safe injection site when it comes to meth.I beg you to start talking to people who have overcome the addiction, take it from them, they're the true experts sitting here."**********

Early in the campaign Marion Willis identified a vacated building in the west end that is already designed for exactly what is needed - drug detox and stabilization. It's actually two buildings, with the modern medical treatment side with secure bed units to the west connected to an old nun's residence converted to an administration and residential treatment building at 800 Adele Avenue at Arlington St. She sees it as a potential centre of excellence, with drug treatment and education programs aligned with long term supports for recovery.

The problem is, that the Pallister government felt an existing lease was too profitable for the landlords and intend to legislate their way out of a 20 year contract between a child-welfare agency and the building owners. The First Nations children in care were relocated (to where, no one seems to want to say) and in the process government officials, committed to paying $36,000 a month in rent for an empty building through the new year, said some negative things about the facility that resulted in a lawsuit over souring potential new renters. Messy messy, and a lot of hard feelings on both sides.At the St. Boniface town hall, Willis beseeched the candidates to look beyond the legal dispute the government has provoked with the building's owners and take a big step to handle the meth crisis. "What this city needs most has been sitting since February empty, locked up, within walking distance of Health Sciences Centre."

* All 3 candidates agreed their parties would look into it being part of their drug treatment program expansion. * Member of Parliament for the riding, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, is very familiar with the success of Morberg Houseand told us he'd go to bat with Ottawa for funding. * Area councilor Cindy Gilroy wrote "I have treatment facilities in my ward and have supported the need for treatment centers so am not opposed." So, the MP and councilor are interested in the building being restored to public health care use, as are the leaders of the Liberal Party, Green Party, and a mental health support worker running for the NDP. And guess what? Even two of Pallisters' Progresive Conservative candidates - both MLA's seeking to return to the Legislature - agreed that if 800 Adele is already designed to handle drug detox, then it should be considered for a potential new site. Watch the response of Jon Reyes, seeking election in the new constituency of Waverley, about using the existing facilty at 800 Adele instead of the PC commitment to spend millions to build a similar 12 bed unit at HSC.

"I think it's very important for us to have these conversations with the stakeholders that have experience who have the experience in terms of these treatment centres ... I am very open-minded when it comes to information that can be brought forward."

Shannon Martin is the Tory candidate in McPhillips, another MLA relocating to a new electoral division:

"I think Marty, we have to look at every opportunity to use existing facilities ... we shouldn't be in a position to rule anything out, everything should be on the table."

So, two Party leaders in Manitoba, the area MP who was on the House of Commons Health Committee, the area city councilor, an NDP rep, and two Progressive Conservative MLA's running for re-election - all agree with the concept Marion Willis brought forward this summer, for the province to make use of the drug stabilization unit at 800 Adele instead of taxpayers paying $36,000 a month to keep it empty. Dane Bourget, Director of JibStop, told me he could have the detox beds and the residential treatment beds at 800 Adele "filled in 24 hours!" That ain't fake news.

Independent journalism like this is how the public interest is protected.That's what I have tried to do with my 2019 Manitoba Election Coverage as a one man bureau. Regardless of the election results, it would be nice if the mainstream media finally paid attention to these four issues - discarded used needles, meth-induced property and violent crime, safe injection sites, and drug detoxand recovery spending priorities - and asked the next class of MLA's and the next cabinet the kinds of questions I have raised from the angles I have explored, even if it challenges their own views in the newsroom. NOW GO OUT AND VOTE.

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Based on what we know thus far from the public record, either A) Highway Traffic Act tickets and penalties are priced too high, orB) NDP candidates aren't diligent about obligations to the courts.Considering the combined wage of the first two NDP candidates identified in last week's story were earning over $100,000 at the University of Winnipeg (Wab Kinew in 2015) and over $94,000 as a Member of the Legislature (Nahanni Fontaine in 2017), pleading poverty seems an unlikely option.I have learned the NDP Leader and his Deputy Leader aren't alone in the category of NDP candidates who had a garnishee order executed to satisfy overdue Provincial Court fines.

And since Southdale hopeful Karen Myshkowsky was a school teacher in the Louis Riel School Division at the time, it seems unlikely that her wage was an issue in affording to pay the ticket, before the sheriff visited her employer with a Notice of Garnishment. Myshkowsky is a first-time campaigner set up in a former Liquor Mart in the constituency. She started full-time at Glenlawn Collegiate with high risk and special needs students in January 2015, after a couple of years as an on-call substitute. Before the end of the year, $343.80 had been redirected from her December paycheque. And it wasn't the last time, either.

In March of 2018, another Certificate of Default was entered, and the Sheriff made sure the school division coughed up an even higher fine - $439.00 - off Myshkowsky's wages to the courts.

Like Kinew, Myshkowsky was a private citizen employed in education, both times her wages were seized by the court. Like Fontaine in St. Johns, the garnishment of the NDP candidate in Southdale was apparently not previously reported in the media or self-disclosed. Voters would have no idea. Last week I raised the Fontaine matter with Liberal leader Dougald Lamont and asked if Bill 240 should include the public's right to know if at the very least, elected officials (as Fontaine was) seeking re-election, went offside with the courts. His answer seems to encompass the Myshkowsky case too, saying a political party should be upfront about these issues (assuming their vetting process even looks for garnishment orders involving candidates).

"I think offences against democracy should be considered just as much as other kinds of offences especially when you are talking about people who are politicians."Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont

(Lamont also slid in that Brian Pallister kept having "bozo explosions" from within the PC Caucus, refering to last week's discovery that MLA Rick Wowchuk was allowed to run for re-election after complaints of problematic behaviors towards staff.)

When I investigated that maybe new disclosure laws for candidates didn't go quite far enough, people hadn't thought about it at all. Their thinking mostly stopped at how the legislation was largely designed by the PC government to embarass Wab Kinew. But when I gave the example of voters in St. Johns not being told the wages of their MLA were garnisheed to pay a court fine - and it had to sink in a bit - Lamont echoed the feedback I got from readers: "Ya, I think it's in the public interest".

It isn't known right now if there are even more candidates in the Manitoba election, for the NDP or for other parties, whose employer got a visit from the Sheriff. *********

The Manitoba NDP is running at least 3 (professionally-paid) candidates who forced the sheriff's office to serve legal notice on their employer to collect an outstanding court fine. How did that escape the attention of the mainstream media in Winnipeg? Or as Lamont put it "Who's going to be the watchdog?"Well... the Myshkowsky candidacy has another controversy in play that more directly points to the media and its selective approach to applying the microscope to candidates.

In 2014, the Gord Steeves campaign for mayor of Winnipeg was KO'd after the MSM insisted he account for comments his wife had made - years before on Facebook - about drunken aboriginal panhandlers downtown making her feel unsafe. When those comments were originally posted, one of the people who endorsed those views was the husband of Myshkowsky.

"I love your post" he wrote, a post so controversial one local outlet said it "derailed her husband's campaign".

Why wasn't the NDP candidate in Southdale grilled and hounded for her spouses comments the way a PC-affiliated mayoral candidate was? Was she asked about it even once?Surely, not a double standard from MSM.(It should be noted that less than a year ago Global News actually asked Jay Myshkowsky about this when he ran for school trustee in LRSD Ward 4 - and he apologized.) *********

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Friday, September 6, 2019

On a day when the Manitoba NDP could have crowed loud and long about the Pallister PC's re-upping on an MLA who cracked unwanted juvenile 'beaver' jokes to his constituency assistant, party leader Wab Kinew took the wind out of his party's sails before the evening newscasts with a new set of 'woman problems'. The day started with reports that Progressive Conservative MLA Rick Wowchuk, running for re-election in Swan River, had violated Manitoba Legislative Assembly workplace policy 5 times, including showing a former constituency assistant a picture of naked women on his cellphone in 2016. “I unfortunately made comments and shared an email that caused offence,” Wowchuk said in his statement. “I deeply regret doing so and I have taken full responsibility for my actions." He added he found the workplace sensitivity training he was required to attend, "extremely valuable". Despite his transgressions, and the long list of complaints that didn't register as technical breaches of the workplace protocols about sexism and harassment, Brian Pallister signed his nomination papers.

But even as that sordid story emerged Thursday morning, Kinew had already greased the skids underneath his party with his not-an-ultimatum to a town hall on environmental issues scheduled for the evening. And the target of his ire, Winnipeg Free Press columnist Shannon Sampert made sure everyone knew the score. "Wab Kinew won't participate on tonight panel on the environment if I am a moderator so I got asked to step down" she told everyone on Twitter at noon. "I guess he didn't like my columns."

Sampert, a retired political science professor at the University of Winnipeg, was one of 3 moderators for the Hotel Fort Garry event and was replaced by Molly McCracken of the "non-partisan" Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The west end activist has held many NDP-connected jobs this century, including with the Selinger government as a Health Policy analyst.

It quicky emerged that Sampert wasn't the first woman that Kinew refused to be questioned by.

APTN news host Melissa Ridgen piped up that Kinew had pulled the same stunt over a planned sit-down TV interview.

"Wab Kinew also wouldn't do a sit-down interview with APTN National News this summer unless we guaranteed it was a man asking the questions.

Now he refused to attend an environmental forum unless the female moderator was removed."

Both Sampert and Ridgen have been pointed critics of Kinew's nuanced denial he had assaulted then-spouse Tara Hart in 2003, and have assailed his attempt to straddle the line on whether victims of domestic violence are to be believed, or just those who don't name him as their abuser.

Given that a police report was filed and 2 charges were laid against Kinew- and then dropped without Hart's knowledge - he has never been able to shake the controversy.

Sampert has roasted Kinew and the NDP for various offensive attitudes and behaviors towards women staffers and party members, including the antics of "Minister Tickles" Stan Struthers and she called the party a dumpster fire in a 2018 column entitled "Women deserve better than the current NDP."

Sampert has now set her Twitter account to private. By the time she did, there was already significant backlash online towards Kinew - and to the organizers of the panel including the Green Action Centre, Bike Winnipeg and the Manitoba Public Health Association for bending to his demands.A Free Press report stated, "NDP LeaderWab Kinew and Eric Reder, one of the forum’s organizers with the Wilderness Committee, acknowledged there were conversations between the party and organizers about her role."

"The decision is up to the organizer as to who they want to host their event," Kinew said

Reder said it was "unfortunate" the organization had to decide on the event day to ask Sampert to step down ... "It’s crucial that the candidates that are vying to lead the province speak about the environment and the climate crisis in public as much as possible, so when an issue arose... we had to make a decision (Thursday) morning."

Sampert told the newspaper "I am stunned by this ... This is payback for my column on his domestic violence history and his misogyny, and clearly, he still has a problem with women."

**********

Kinew decided he was going to pick and choose which women journalists he would take questions from during the election, which a well-known University academic called "no surprise to those of us who have followed his career".

"Kinew objected to Ridgen conducting the interview, likely for the same reasons he objected to Sampert: both journalists had done superb, highly critical pieces on Kinew's history of violence, misogyny, and sexism." he wrote in a social media dialogue involving Ridgen.

"Kinew's demand to control the media displays a nasty streak of authoritarianism, which comes as no surprise to those of us who have followed his career (and observed him at close quarters during his time as -- and this still sticks in my craw -- university administrator, a position created for him by his patron Lloyd Axworthy and for which he was unqualified)."

He added "but there is enough blame left over for the eco-forum organizers who should have told Kinew to go f*ck himself and that the forum would go ahead with or without him."

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CBC Radio managed to completely dodge the controversy on Friday morning while interviewing Kinew on-air and also in getting a comment from Reder.

Not only did CBC earn an F to start the new j-school year, they earned an extra F for avoiding the issue DESPITE having also spoken with Sampert beforehand.

CBC knew they were favouring their former newsroom colleague by giving him the softball treatment. Sampert had told them her side:

"Kinew apparently said it was a decision made by the committee and not because of him... I was told Wab wouldn't appear if I was moderator and they needed three parties to be there sothey wanted me to step down."

A recent Probe Research poll found an astonishing lack of confidence in Kinew, even with his own Party supporters: A fifth said assault allegations made them lose confidence in him, with it doubling to 41 per cent between 18-34 years of age. Four out of ten poll respondents said allegations of Kinew committing assault (he was convicted of punching a cabbie) prevent them from voting NDP.

Now FN and eco-voters - whose journalists he shunned - may well be revising the prospects of their own support for Kinew.

This is the only independent election coverage in Manitoba - going to press conferences and town halls, following up on tips, asking questions... you can help keep it going with the expenses by becoming a donor!